Advisory Board Members

Kim Alexander — Ms. Alexander is president and founder of the California Voter Foundation (CVF), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to advancing the responsible use of technology in the democratic process.

Secretary Debra Bowen — Debra Bowen, a pioneer in open government reform, election integrity, and personal privacy rights, became only the sixth woman in California history elected to a statewide constitutional office when she was elected as Secretary of State in November 2006.

As the chief elections officer for the largest state in the nation, Secretary Bowen is responsible for overseeing state and federal elections, a role that also requires her to test and certify the voting equipment used in California. Her goal is to ensure that voting machines certified for use in Californians elections are secure, accurate, reliable and accessible, and every voter’s ballot is counted exactly as it was cast. Secretary Bowen is also responsible for ensuring election laws and campaign disclosure requirements are enforced, maintaining a statewide database of all registered voters, certifying the official lists of candidates for each election, tracking and certifying ballot initiatives, compiling election returns, and certifying the election results for all state and federal contests. Beyond her role as the state’s chief elections officer, Secretary of State Bowen is also charged with managing a number of other programs for the people of California. She is committed to carrying out all of her responsibilities in an open, transparent fashion that opens up government and builds people’s confidence in our democracy.

First elected in 1992 to represent the 53rd Assembly District in west Los Angeles County, Secretary Bowen served three terms before being elected to represent the 28th Senate District in 1998. She then served two terms in the Senate until she was elected Secretary of State. During her time in the Legislature, Secretary Bowen chaired the Senate Elections, Reapportionment & Constitutional Amendments Committee for two years, the Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee for six years, and the Assembly Natural Resources Committee for two years. At the national level, she chaired the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) E-Communications Steering Committee, served three years on NCSL’s Executive Board, and was California’s appointee to the NCSL Task Force on State and Local Taxation of Telecommunications and Electronic Commerce. As a legislator, Secretary Bowen authored a number of election-related laws designed to build public confidence in voting systems, including measures to require all election results to be audited using the paper record produced by the electronic voting machines and requiring all audits to be conducted in public and include absentee and early-voter ballots.

Secretary Bowen was born in Rockford, Illinois, and graduated from Michigan State University in 1976. After earning her law degree at the University of Virginia, she practiced corporate, tax and ERISA law at Winston & Strawn in Chicago and in Washington, D.C., at the Los Angeles office of Wall Street firm Hughes, Hubbard & Reed; and as a sole practitioner in Los Angeles. Bowen first volunteered her legal services as a member of the Heal the Bay Legal Committee, and eventually her practice grew to include environmental and land use cases, as well as tax and business matters. Secretary Bowen is married to Mark Nechodom, a research scientist with the U.S. Forest Service.

Edward W. Felten is a Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs at Princeton University, and is the founding Director of Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy. His research interests include computer security and privacy, especially relating to media and consumer products; and technology law and policy. He has published about eighty papers in the research literature, and two books. His research on topics such as web security, copyright and copy protection, and electronic voting has been covered extensively in the popular press. His weblog, at freedom-to-tinker.com, is widely read for its commentary on technology, law, and policy.

He was the lead computer science expert witness for the Department of Justice in the Microsoft antitrust case, and he has testified in other important lawsuits. He has testified before the Senate Commerce Committee on digital television technology and regulation, and before the House Administration Committee on electronic voting. In 2004, Scientific American magazine named him to its list of fifty worldwide science and technology leaders.

David Jefferson — Dr. Jefferson has been conducting research at the intersection of computers, the Internet, and public elections for over a decade. He is Chair of the California Secretary of State’s Voting systems Technical Assessment and Advisory Board, which provides technical advice on the security, privacy, and reliability of voting systems.

Doug Kellner — Mr. Kellner is Co-Chair of the New York State Board of Elections. He has served as one of the ten commissioners of the New York City Board of Elections since 1993. Before he became commissioner, Mr. Kellner was the election lawyer for the Democratic Party in Manhattan and played major roles in election-related decisions and procedural-drafting in New York City.

Dave Klein is the Elections Research & Operations Specialist at the Ohio Office of Secretary of State. His responsibilities include evaluating expert scientific, analytic, and technical information to advance Secretary Jennifer Brunner’s goal of restoring trust in Ohio’s elections by ensuring that they are fair, honest, and accurate. Prior to joining the Ohio Office of Secretary of State, Dave was involved in a variety of operations and technology management projects, including the development of standard practices and policies; implementation of technical systems; and the improvement of testing methods and analytics. He is a graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, where he received his B.A. in Psychology. After completing his undergraduate work, Dave continued his studies at The Ohio State University, earning an M.A. in Social Psychology and a Ph.D./ABD in Social Neuroscience under a National Science Foundation Fellowship award.

Sharon Laskowski — Dr. Sharon Laskowski is a computer scientist in the Information Technology Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and manager of the Visualization and Usability Group, which is developing evaluation methods, metrics, and standards for human-computer interaction. She was the lead author of the report “Improving the Usability and Accessibility of Voting Systems and Products” as mandated in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, Public Law 107-252. Dr. Laskowski provides technical and research assistance to the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC). She leads the effort to develop the usability, accessibility and privacy requirements for the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines.

Scott Luebking — Mr. Luebking is a usability and accessibility expert that has worked closely with California jurisdictions to educate their staff about the importance of usability and accessibility assessment for voting system evaluation and procurement.

Freddie Oakley — Since 1999, Ms. Oakley has served as the Chief Deputy Clerk/Recorder for Yolo County, California. In addition to managing elections, she has implemented a plan to ensure privacy and security of Recorder-maintained documents, worked to incorporate the latest technology into both the Elections and Recorder processes and created a successful Junior Voter Program.

Ron Rivest is a professor of computer science at MIT. He is co- inventor of the famous RSA algorithm, creator of MD5 and one of the world’s most renowned cryptographers. Professor Rivest is a recipiet of the ACM Turing Award, the highest prize in computer science. Dr. Rivest is a member of the EAC’s TGDC.

Noel Runyan has over thirty-six years experience with microprocessors, digital logic, analog circuits, speech output, systems architecture, human interface design, and development of access technology for persons with disabilities. He has extensive experience with the development and application of speech and braille interface technologies and integration of computer systems with speech, braille, and/or large print output. He founded Speech Works in 1983, which was renamed Personal Data Systems in 1985, to develop communications devices for persons with visual impairments. In addition, Mr. Runyan has designed and developed hardware and software for the Audapter speech synthesizer and the Talking Tablet System as well as authored the EasyScan, BuckScan and PicTac scanning programs.

Barbara Simons is retired from IBM Research, where she did algorithmic research in areas such as scheduling theory and compiler optimization. She is a former president of ACM, and the founder of ACM’s U.S. Public Policy Committee (USACM). While she has worked on technology policy issues for many years, during the past decade her policy work has focused almost exclusively on voting related issues. She is co-authoring a book on voting technology with Douglas Jones.

The first woman to receive the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award from the College of Engineering of U.C. Berkeley, Simons is also a Fellow of ACM and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She served on the President’s Export Council’s Subcommittee on Encryption and on the Information Technology-Sector of the President’s Council on the Year 2000 Conversion. She has testified before both the U.S. and state legislatures and at government sponsored hearings. Simons is currently a member of the United States Election Assistance Commission Board of Advisers.

Dr. DeForest B. Soaries, Jr. is the Senior Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, New Jersey. Highlights of Dr. Soaries’ work include recruiting 265 families to become foster parents to 325 abandoned babies; helping 140 children find adoptive parents; constructing 124 new homes for low and moderate income residents to own; creating the first faith based Cisco Technology Academy in the country; operating the Central New Jersey STRIVE program for job readiness; serving hundreds of youth in an after school center and homework club; forming a youth entrepreneurship program; and redeveloping commercial real estate. Dr. Soaries is also the former Chairman of the United States Election Assistance Commission and was appointed by President George W. Bush on December 15, 2003 after being confirmed by the United States Senate. In February 2003, Dr. Soaries was appointed to be a public director of the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York. He was a member of the affordable housing committee of the bank. From January 12, 1999 to January 15, 2002, Dr. Soaries served as New Jersey’s Secretary of State. Dr. Soaries earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Fordham University; a Master of Divinity Degree from Princeton Theological Seminary; and a Doctor of Ministry Degree from United Theological Seminary. He has also received six honorary Doctorate degrees from institutions of higher learning.

Anthony Stevens — Mr. Stevens is Assistant Secretary of State for New Hampshire, a position he has held since 1994. In this role, he has served as the New Hampshire Coordinator for the Help America Vote Act and Project Manager for the Statewide Voter Registration System. He is also a member of the EAC’s Standards Board. Prior to his current position, he was Vice President for Corporate Lending at Citibank and a member of the New Hampshire state legislature for two terms.